


in the room where everything is lost

by merriell



Series: kiss with a fist [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 19:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19157125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriell/pseuds/merriell
Summary: ENGLAND, 2018-2025.Every ways Charlotte had hurt her after it all ended.





	in the room where everything is lost

_i_.

You tried to remember what your room looked like when she was still hanging around you, lounging on your bed while you read the books you were supposed to read for school. She always had headphones on, soft rock music faintly blaring from it—dozing off from a daze of that London summer where she wore crop-tops that revealed the pale skin of her stomach. How it made a mess of you, the sight of her skin, freckles scattered on the back of her shoulders. How she made a mess of your stationeries and made your homework a fan for her to repel the dampness from the room. How there were strands of black hair scattered somewhere.

You’ve lost this since the last winter you were together. The accident left two scars on you: one on the palm of your right hand and the other somewhere invisible on your chest. Here was a secret: she had pack her bags so hurriedly that she’d forgotten she had took off her sweater and messily left it scattered on the floor of your bedroom. For the last few weeks you hugged it and smelled the faint smell of soap that reminded you of the crook of her neck while you cried, but stopped just before you were asleep to put lemon slices over your eyes.

In the room, you heard a cat meowing and you thought it was just an illusion.

A few months after, when she’d still occasionally drop by at holidays just to argue with her sister over tea or argue with her sister’s boyfriend over anything she could see and British television or to converse with her father, you tried to focus on the way the cookies were baked in the oven. How the smell of tea was stronger than the smell of flowers that grazed you by when she passed by you like you weren’t there. You held your head high. Yet you shoved the sweater in the back of your wardrobe and cried again when you realized you missed the soft fabric under your fingers.

 

_ii._

She only acknowledged that you exist in the same space as her on your birthday, right before it ended. Others had went off to their own business or had helped her with the dishes, but she lit up the Sobranie that she stole from her father’s coat and looked at you over the television. You were cleaning the shelves beside it, where your uncle had managed to miss some spots where he had spilled hot chocolate. There was a bruise—a hickey—on her neck right below her jaw, and she had bare feet over the couch. Her nails were painted with a clear polish with only white strips at the end.

“Happy birthday,” she directed at you. You turned away from the damp cloth inside the palm of your hands to her face, where her heavy-lidded eyes stared at you with an expression you couldn’t quite put on. “That was a nice cake.”

You weren’t sure what to answer. “It is,” you somehow decided on the crappiest.

She scoffed and blew the smoke towards you. "I need to go back to Sam's. It's late." You cringed and moved away as far away, disliking the way the smell felt stuck on your throat and made your eyes water.

 

 _iii_.

It was during your second-to-last semester at university when you’d heard of what was actually happening with Patrias—and Kir. You have removed yourself long from the environment except for the times when you were needed for holidays that you haven’t been paying attention. No one else would’ve stayed to watch the storm but you put on an umbrella and stepped inside just for the sake of it. You called your uncle up and your uncle called his boyfriend; it didn’t take three hours on point for you to arrive in the dark room of some porcelain-floored house in Austria who looked like it was inherited from a nobility.

She had the same position she had when she first talked to you after long. And maybe in a way, it was; you haven’t seen her for long. She had long hair now and her eyes were colder, something playful missing from it. She lowered her bare feet from her makeshift throne when she noticed you were there.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

“I didn’t want you to hear.” You answered with a shrug. “You’d run away.”

“Why would I? We’re nothing to each other.”

You didn’t have to ask to know that she had chosen the words properly for it to hurt. Hell, it did. She always had a knack of hurting people with only words. Her fascination with knives happened to include the one she kept behind her rosy lips. You tried not to be bothered, to stare and grip at your leather bag and closed your eyes to breathe.

“You’re right. We have been nothing for a long time.”

“Which is why it’s a wonder for you to come here. I don’t need you—”

“I came here because of Alana and Kir, not you,” you said, and somehow you understood the sick enjoyment that came with the way you saw those blue eyes faltered for a bit. “I didn’t want you to need me.”

There was silence before she laughed. The sound was intense and foreign in the empty room. “You’re good,” she said. "I knew why I loved you now."

You felt something in you froze.

 

_iv._

“It’s fake. It’s all fake.”

She refused to eat. She moved back to her father’s house and locked herself in her old room. Her sister could break it down if she needed to, her father kept a spare at the top of the shelf near the television. They did not force the door open to spare her pride. You knocked in her door every morning, seven am sharp. She never answered, though she opened the door a little for her father every afternoon. You waited for him to get out.

He was in distress over it, it was clear. You stared at him from where you were leaning and asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

“A lot,” he answered. “I can help her to the best of my abilities, but it’s not enough.” There was something hidden on his voice that made your heart skipped something in the routine and popped a dull ache in your chest. “Can’t you help her?”

“If you can’t help her, then I can’t either,” you answered. “Please bring the food in with you next time she let you in.”

You pushed yourself away from the wall and went back to the kitchen, polishing table wares until your uncle had to pry your hands away and reminded you to breathe.

 

_v._

She was bleeding so bad you’ve forgotten every promises you made to yourself for years after she had left you when her hands touched yours. You stayed awake beside her in her bed for a long time, but she only woke up when you needed to go out for your internship. She glanced at you when you walked in carrying camellias. You put it on the table beside her and sat. She stared wordlessly.

“What a stupid thing to do,” you said to her after the silence seemed suffocating.

“It is,” she answered with a shrug.

There was another silence. There was an apple near the flower vase so you opened it after checking under the hospital’s bed and finding what you suspected was there: a knife, army-issued one that was more than the size of your hands. A laughter came out of her when you found it. You peeled the apple carefully while she watched.

It was when the apple was peeled and you both were eating when she said, eyes not quite looking, “I wish you had told me what happened. I would have never left.”

You didn’t answer. “You left your sweater on my room,” you said instead.

“Did I?” she smiled, a carbon copy of her father’s. You nodded as an answer. “Well. Did you kept it?”

“I did,” you answered. You gave back the knife at her, and she received it and put it on the other table. She was still staring. “Perhaps it was better if I gave it back to you.”

“You didn’t,” she stated.

“I didn’t,” you answered. You looked at her this time.

“Perhaps it was better if I never left.”

You were silent. Words were lost to you. You weren’t sure you were still in love with her—maybe you never had. But at that time, when she reached over and touched you for the first time in years, you didn’t flinch away. You felt her cold bandaged fingers in your skin, gently grazing the side of your forehead to push a strand of your red hair away, and you thought—

_Ask me anything. Ask me and I’ll answer. Ask me and I’ll do anything. I’ve always wanted to die for love, but loving you was close enough._

Instead, the phone rang and she turned her head away. You bit down your lip and she picked up the phone, and, just like that, everything was lost.


End file.
